The Conquest of the Canary Islands from an International Law Perspective
Volume 349 of the Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte published
Two hundred years prior to Columbus’s “discovery” of America in 1492, Europeans were already exploring the waters of new worlds, including the Canary Islands, an archipelago off the west coast of Africa inhabited by various indigenous peoples. Focusing on the conquest of the Canary Islands, which over the course of the 15th century were subjugated by the French, Portuguese and Spanish, the study adds a new chapter to the history of international law and breaks new ground in the process: it understands the conquest as an encounter between legal and normative concepts, highlights the contribution of the indigenous Canary Islanders to the development of modern international law, and opens up a new perspective on the achievements of the School of Salamanca in international law.
Julia Bühner has received several awards for this study: the Department of History / Philosophy Dissertation Prize (University of Münster), the Dissertation Prize of the International History Working Group of the Association of German Historians, the Johannes Zilkens Doctoral Prize of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, and the Dissertation Prize of the Medievalists’ Society.